Wednesday, July 25, 2007

i am an insufferable hipster douchedad

exhibit A: guess who's going to see the White Stripes at the Garden tonight? (hint: first he's going to swing through the river to river fest to catch the Carolina Chocolate Drops)exhibit B: i look forward to a good teabagging. oooooolong!exhibit C (an UPDATE): boy is my face red. here's extra-persuasive proof that i'm a douche (as if you needed any more): so i get to madison square garden at about 9:30 with a friend. we traipse over to will call where our tickets are waiting. everything was ominously quiet ... suspiciously closed. hmm. very fishy. no hot rocker chicks lingering about, no funny concert smells. no nothing, actually. we do a full lap of the garden, ultimately finding a media entrance. i peek in, there's a security guard on the phone. i'm all "um, where's the will call?" he's all "closed." i'm like "well we have tickets for the white stripes--they're supposed to be playing here." he goes " uh yeah. they did. yesterday."oops.

Wednesday, July 18, 2007

behold the third column!

hello. you may have noticed a slightly different look today at Nice Guy World Headquarters. things may look sleeker to you, more compelling, somehow richer. well, yes. i added that column over there on the left and i, being even more of a luddite than Baron Analog von Ludd, am a wee bit proud of myh4x0r sk1llz!!1! actually, it was a fairly easy tweak to the template. i googled "three column blogger template," which led me to a how-to by this guy. thanks, this guy. now you can add a column to without knowing your URL from your XML.so with a new column, i was in need of piping hot pile of content to stick in there. now, i used to belong to adsense but after six months of posting ads and generating only about $0.013 in revenue, i took the ads down. well, after reading this thought-provoking post by MetroDad, and the ensuing discussion, i put them back up. mostly because i am a dick. actually, i am kidding -- i totally get the inherent distaste people feel about seeing ads on a personal web site. and yes we are an advertising saturated culture and there's an argument to be made that advertising corrodes the soul and gives unicorns cancer. but what with a new third column, i have a gaping content chasm to fill every day! and these ads are self-generating! and! when i write about strippers, i get ads with titles like "bachelorette girls night" and "get a removable pole" -- which is funny because i know a few people who could stand to have their poles removed. anyway. mostly i added ads because i could use the scratch. i like money and if i can get $.013 for writing about pole-dancing toddlers, then i am clearly ahead of the game. if any of you fine people are disgusted by me, well, at least you have that in common with everyone else in my life.incidentally, speaking of MetroDad, i had the pleasure of meeting him, Mom-101, Crouton Boy, LoDand Mommy PoppinsIN THE FLESH last week for delightful bloggy beers (actually, this having transpired in manhattan, i took it upon myself to have three manhattans before i down-shifted to beer). when a colleague had asked me what i was doing after work, i actually found myself in the awkward situation of having to conjure an answer slightly less geeky than "um, meeting a group of mommy and daddy bloggers who i don't actually know for a drink." so i told him i was off to play Magic: the Gathering entirely in Klingon. can't wait to do it again.

Tuesday, July 17, 2007

rethinking my stance on pole dancing

maybe, you know, just perhaps, i've been looking at this whole toddler-stripper-dance-on-the-subway-pole thing in the wrong light. maybe instead of laughing (for laughing is all we can do when we are dying inside), i should have been a little more supportive of my daughter. maybe i should have encouraged her impulses. my bride, after all, went to smith. she is a strong, proud and poised woman. i am an elightened man.

maybe my daughter was just doing her part for feminism! maybe i should nurture her inner pole dancer!who am i to scoff at her awesome sense of empowerment?!i feel so liberated now. relieved. and i have the healing touch of a certain dr colbert to thank.

Saturday, July 14, 2007

unfit to father

my child is barely two years old and already i have failed as a parent. i have let her down. i have let myself down. i am an abject disappointment of a deadbeat dad. i can't pinpoint exactly where i went wrong, but i can tell that, somewhere, somehow, something went terribly wrong.

this morning the whole family rode into manhattan together. we grabbed a quick breakfast and then descended into the subway. (because the F Line rules. and all you haters KNOW IT!) anyway, for a while she was a good little girl. she sat next to daddy and talked about how she was riding on the train. she explained to us how the train was going through a tunnel under the ground. she sang her favorite song: "farmer had a farm, E-I-E-I-O. moo moo moo moo moo moo moo. E-I-E-I-O!" and my favorite, "twinkle little stah; uppa bub deworlso high" (when you try to join in and sing, you know, the correct lyrics, she shouts NO DADDY! I SING IT!)

anyway. after a while she got a little antsy, so she climbed off the seat and grabbed the subway pole. she held it with two hands like a big girl. she craned her head around the pole and did a little peek-a-boo ("i see you, daddy!") she charmed everyone on the train by waving hello and smiling. absolutely freakin' adorable.

and then.

and then.

and then she shouted "I DANCING ON THE POLE!" while gyrating her little hips against it! i froze in horror. all my hair instantly fell out and my stomach started digesting itself. my daughter, the world's tiniest stripper! between hyperventilations, i told her not to dance while the subway was running. so she stopped. she grinned sweetly.

and then she licked the pole.

so, yeah. if i'm still alive, i'll let you know when my cardiac arrest is over.

Wednesday, July 11, 2007

unskinny midget fetish

in 1988 (it may have been 1989, i'm not sure), i went to a little concert at the los angeles forum. the headlining act was none other than mr david lee roth, touring in support of his Skyscraper album. oh yeah, you know what i'm talking about: big hair, spandex pants and steve vai wielding the tremendous triple-neck heart-shaped axe.

anyway. imagine young mr nice guy's poofy-haired delight when he showed up at the forum only to learn who the opening act was .... guess who it was! GUESS! DO IT ALREADY!

wrong! it was POISON! yay! poison! verily if the evening was a rose, it was one without a thorn -- bret michaels' claim about "every" rose notwithstanding.

i bring all this up to just ask you a simple question: are you as excited as i am for vh1's ROCK OF LOVE? well, are you? YOU KNOW YOU ARE!

check out these classy ladies in this casting video. (keep an eye peeled for some top-notch mothering)

Tuesday, July 10, 2007

GAH! i wrote a hugely long generally awesome post about all the important shit you need to know about my life since i've last updated and ... blogger ate it. i am blinded by the hate. i can only taste bile and fury. and rage. and the blood of my ancestors. it is a foul and bitter thing. and now blogger won't let me put a title on this fucking goddamn post which i'm now calling in my head "blogger is invited to eat my cat's dirty ass."so here are some highlights FOR THE SECOND TIME, even though it's only the first time for you and i am lazy and tired and it's not going to be as good this time around. first and foremost: i am walking again. sometime around mon frere's wedding i was able to walk under my own powers again. for a while there i was using a cane, which was awesome except for the fact that it was the ugliest, most geriatric silver hospital-issue Old Man Shaky Hobblecane on earth. the only thing that would have made it more old mannish would be if it were one of those canes with four feet. the reason i'm telling you about my cane is because it's an important part of what i have discovered to be The Funniest Thing on Earth. the funniest thing on earth is, i have determined, Naked Wet Guy Walking With a Cane. i would need to use my cane to get into and out of the shower and one day as i was getting out of the shower, i walked, naked and wet, with my cane, back to my room. i caught a glimpse of me in the mirror and i didn't know whether to laugh or cry. i hobbled over to my wife, who was playing with my child, and declared: BEHOLD: NAKED WET GUY WALKING WITH A CANE! she laughed (although probably cried a little inside because she realized that she's married to me). then i opened up a new savings account that will be dedicated solely to my child's future therapeutic needs.about a week after my brother's wedding, i went to ANOTHER wedding. this one was in st. louis and it was not my first choice location on my list of Destination Weddings I Must Attend (i had been invited, the following week, to a wedding in Bali, which is actually pretty high up there on the Destination Weddings I Must Attend list, although my bank account has its own list which it calls Destination Weddings You Cannot Afford to Attend so Send a Card and Go To St. Louis, Loser!) so the wife and i went to st. louis. BONUS WEDDING ROUND: my in-laws came to brooklyn, stayed for the weekend watched the child who we got to leave behind! for an entire weekend! wooooo! the plan was clear: go to st. louis and sleep the whole time. sleep through the wedding. sleep through the reception. just go and sleep. sleep on the plane. sleep on the ride to the hotel. sleep and dream about sleeping. that was the plan. but we all know what old robert burns said: "The best-laid plans o' mice an' men Gang aft a-gley," which i believe is Scottish for "The best laid plans of mice and men are often slaughtered gangland style." this was the first wedding we have attended where BOTH the wife and myself are good friends with BOTH the bride and the groom as well as many of their friends. the translation here is that: no, we didn't catch up on sleep, but we did catch up on drinking. and eating insanely tasty barbeque even though i made the mistake of not ordering the pig snoots because i was a little afraid of--and not entirely sure how to eat--them. being fully caught up on drinking, i thought it might be a good time to get caught up on dancing, seeing as how i was no longer dependent on my cane, even though it would have made an excellent dance prop. after the dancing (for which i suffered for the next week -- swollen knee, angry joint, limping daddy, you get the picture), a group of us decided that since the ceremony had been so very Catholic and sober and serious (the bride's uncle performed the rite -- he's a cardinal who came in from India and was a very serious person), we took it upon ourselves to lighten the atmosphere of the bridal suite. so we did what any good friend of a serious Catholic bride would do: we went to Spanky's Adult Emporium(which, if Spanky had a sense of humor, he'd rename Spanky's Adult Empornium) and stocked up on supplies. we then stole the groom's key to the bridal suite and left some surprises in their conjugal boudoir. i will not get into details, but it involved lots of inflating and some industrial-strength easily-cleaned molded rubber and i will say that my only regret is that we didn't splurge and get the 15 lb. butt-plug that was bigger than my head. we hooked them up, though. that's all i'll say. let's see ... what else happened? my kid got her first shiner. "Shiner" doesn't do it justice though: you could probably see her black eye from Jupiter's darkest moon. apparently mrs nice guy and the kid were at the playground and the tot was having the time of her life in the fountain. (thank merciful baby jesus for the fact that this happened under mrs nice guy's watch because if i had been in charge when this happened this blog would be permanently over forever because i would be incredibly dead for the rest of my life.) she was running around in her swim diaper, water shoes and nothing else, the embodiment of carefree summertime fountain-frolicking bliss, when WHAPAM! head-on collision with an older, bigger boy. like an H3 slamming into a hitch-hiking freegan, the boy hardly noticed the impact. my beautiful guileless daughter, however, was face down in a puddle of water letting loose an unholy shriek that stopped my wife's heart for 23 seconds. the swelling began instantly. i got a call at work informing me that the kid will probably have a little black eye when i next see her. i got home late that night, thursday being my longest day at the office, and the kid was already asleep. i peeked at her as she lay on her stomach, sleeping peacefully. then she rolled over and i saw the pulpy purple lumpen mass that once was her face and i gasped like a Victorian virgin reading DH Lawrence for the first time. her eye was nearly swollen shut. i suddenly felt like her cornerman -- i almost turned to my wife and shouted: "get me a bucket and a razor. we need to cut her!" instead i looked at my beloved spouse as unreproachfully as possible, which she tells me was Very Reproachfully, and asked "are you sure she doesn't need to see a doctor?" well, she was breathing fine and by the morning the swelling had gone down. i tried to get her to wear a slab of raw steak on her face, but she wasn't having any of it. gradually she healed. and now it's funny to hear her say "I HAVING A SHINAH" even though she doesn't really any more.